Chris's dashboard

Chris replied on August 03, 2008 16:29 to the problem "@replies not working properly" in Tapulous:

This whole Twinkle ID/Twitter ID thing is confusing. When I respond to a friend's message it @replies his Twinkle ID, and then posts it to Twitter. His Twinkle and Twitter IDs are different, but if someone had his Twinkle ID on Twitter, that person would see an @reply from me, which would more than likely be a surprise to him.

It seems that the less confusing alternative is just to be sure you use a Twinkle ID that's the same as your Twitter ID.

A comment on the problem "Loopt maps in a web browser aren't functional" in Loopt:

I think I've got the Facebook application working now. I'm a U.S. user, but I'm in an area of Japan right now (and I'm frequently in other places) where my phone is unable to determine my location. I can't set my location at loopt.com, but it looks like I was able to with Facebook. – Chris, on July 25, 2008 03:44

A comment on the question "Excluding travel routers" in Skyhook Wireless:

I have a 3G phone, but which locate me button are you referring to? I can't find any way to shake the phone from this notion that it's in Florida. I turned the phone radio on (I had been using just wifi) in the hope that it might learn more about its location from cell towers, but it's still stuck on Florida. – Chris, on July 25, 2008 02:47

A comment on the question "Excluding travel routers" in Skyhook Wireless:

Right now I'm in Japan, in an area where there are no access points but my own travel router visible to my iPhone. The maps program has located me in Florida based on my travel router, and I don't seem to be able to persuade it to use the GPS to figure out where I really am. I'd like to use the phone to update my position on Loopt, but it zeroes right in on Florida based on the one wifi signal it sees, and there doesn't seem to be any way to make it reconsider.

The router's MAC address is 00-11-24-00-40-31. Can you delete it from the system manually? If you do, will the iPhone then be able to use GPS to locate itself, even though it might take a long time since it won't have any idea where it is (the way a normal GPS would when it starts cold at an unknown location)? – Chris, on July 24, 2008 03:15

A comment on the question "Excluding travel routers" in Skyhook Wireless:

Thanks for your response! I'm headed out on a trip, and I'll be using the router both in places you have scanned and places you haven't. I'll see what happens. – Chris, on July 21, 2008 14:05

Chris started following the problem "Twinkle used to work, now crashes on launch" in Tapulous.

Chris asked a question in Skyhook Wireless on July 20, 2008 16:38:

Excluding travel routers

I travel a lot and use a wireless travel router in my hotel room. I was concerned that this router would screw up my (and maybe others') position, since it would pop up in different locations at different times. The Skyhook support people assured me that they had algorithms to weed out travel routers, but I found on a recent trip that mine was causing my iPhone to locate me in Florida (where I live, and where this router must once have been detected) even though I was in Japan and Hong Kong at the time. In fact, when I was in Hong Kong recently my iPhone would locate me sometimes in Hong Kong and sometimes in Florida, depending on where in my hotel room I was standing.

It seems that if I were to use this router in an as-yet unscanned area, it might cause Skyhook to add other routers seen in that area as being near where it thinks my router is in Florida. For example, I was using my router in Shanghai recently, which I don't think Skyhook has scanned yet; would Skyhook then think that other routers my phone can see are located near my Florida home?

Perhaps, in addition to letting us to add a MAC address location to the database, Skyhook could let us add the MAC address of travel routers that should never be considered.

A comment on the problem "Firefox 3 does not allow the toolbar to be installed because "it does not offer secure updates"" in Loki:

It worked for a while (though there were some issues), until an update for Firefox came out with which Loki was not compatible. – Chris, on July 20, 2008 16:03

Chris replied on July 19, 2008 22:53 to the question "Tapulous/Twitter disconnect?" in Tapulous:

It looks like Twinkle had mysteriously forgotten my Twitter settings. I set them again, and Twitter functionality has been restored.

A comment on the question "Twinkle and GPS usage" in Tapulous:

I don't think iPhone applications know anything about GPS or any of the internals of determining location. They just talk to the OS through the location API, and depending on what resolution they request, the OS decides which of its sensors it needs to employ to provide it. From what I've heard, application developers are encouraged to request the lowest-resolution that they need, which is less taxing on the battery.

I have found that with some applications, like Twitterrific, the location it provides to Twitter will be much more accurate if you use the maps application to determine your location immediately before launching Twitterrific. If Twitterrific asks the OS for the location and the OS doesn't already know, then the OS provides a low-resolution position. This is all based on my own observations of the phone's behavior, not official documentation, so I might be off on a point or two. – Chris, on July 19, 2008 21:25

A comment on the question "Can I force Twinkle to use only GPS? (Versus flawed GSM Location)" in Tapulous:

I wouldn't be surprised if this is already happening. I believe that all of your phone's position inputs--GPS, wifi, and cell signals--get shipped off to the location server, and I'd imagine they can use all that data to repair and fine-tune their database. I sent them an e-mail earlier today to ask them about this, but I don't know if it amounts to a trade secret.

But I guess we're getting a little off-topic here. – Chris, on July 19, 2008 21:17

Chris asked a question in Tapulous on July 19, 2008 21:06:

Tapulous/Twitter disconnect?

Has Tapulous been disconnected from Twitter for the last eight hours or so? I know that Twitter has been having issues today, but it's mostly been up, and I'm not seeing any new Twitter messages in Twinkle. They're showing up in other API-using applications, just not Twinkle.

A comment on the question "Setting Twitter location" in Tapulous:

That had occurred to me too. If Tapulous is acting as a proxy for our Twitter posting, and they receive the location data from us when we post anyway, then from the user's point of view posting wouldn't take any more time if the Twitter location were set. Of course, I might be all wrong about how things work, and I could be talking out of my butt. – Chris, on July 19, 2008 18:15

A comment on the question "Not recieving verification email when adding device to my account." in Tapulous:

I've tried adding a device twice today, and after several hours I haven't received a confirmation e-mail. – Chris, on July 18, 2008 22:40

Chris started following the question "Not recieving verification email when adding device to my account." in Tapulous.

A comment on the question "Setting Twitter location" in Tapulous:

On Twitterrific setting location is a separate function from posting a tweet. You can set your location at any time without tweeting, or you can tweet without setting your location. – Chris, on July 18, 2008 10:46

Chris asked a question in Tapulous on July 18, 2008 03:12:

Responding to a someone I see nearby

If I see someone nearby and send a response, does that response happen outside of Twitter? Clearly if the person has no Twitter account it must, but will it be outside of Twitter in any case? Will the communication be private? Is there documentation anywhere to which I can refer?

Chris asked a question in Tapulous on July 18, 2008 02:55:

Setting Twitter location

Twinkle doesn't appear to set the Twitter location when it posts to Twitter. Twitterrific for the iPhone does do this (optionally). For example, my current location at <http://twitter.com/captainslim> was set by Twitterrific. While it shows a set of lat/long coordinates, which aren't much to look at, I will appear in a "near:" search on search.twitter.com.

Can Twinkle be made to set the Twitter location? Is there a reason you wouldn't want it to? Since Twinkle determines the city before it posts, maybe it'd be better to set that as the location.

Chris reported a problem in Loopt on July 13, 2008 18:36:

Loopt maps in a web browser aren't functional

I've had great success with Loopt on my iPhone, but when I log on from a computer with Firefox, I find that the maps don't display or only partially display. It appears that only the lower 48 U.S. states are displayed, with checkerboard patterns everywhere else. On the iPhone, on the other hand, the map is displayed for any part of the world. At the moment, I and another of my contacts are in Alaska, and another is in Hong Kong, so I can't see any of them on a map. Here's what I see when I look at my own location:

Besides being not especially useful, it's ugly, and it makes the application appear to be broken, even if there might be a good reason for it.

Chris replied on July 12, 2008 14:39 to the question "How many SMS messages does Loopt actually burn?" in Loopt:

I've heard people say that "everything" is SMS-driven, but I've been using loopt for about a day with my phone in airplane mode and the wifi turned on (i.e. with no possibility of sending or receiving an SMS message), and it appears to be fully functional. I suppose that nobody could "ping" me, but I was able to invite someone else and ping someone else, which would seem to indicate that the SMS messages are being initiated by me but sent by the Loopt servers. I was even able to respond to an invitation, though because I had SMS turned off I wasn't aware of the invitation until I launched the loopt program and saw it in my list.